Huang Yong Ping, born 1954, is a French contemporary artist and one of the most famous Chinese Avant-garde artists. Born in Xiamen, he was recognized as the most controversial and provocative artist of the Chinese art scene in the 1980s.

Huang was one of the first artists to consider that art was a strategy. He was a self-taught student educating himself under three well-known men.

He graduated in 1982 from CAFA in Hangzhoue. In 1986 he formed Xiamen Dada. Huang Yong Ping has four periods associated with himself, anti-artistic affectation, anti-self-expression, anti-art, and anti-history. In 1989 at the age of 35 Huang Yong Ping went to Paris for the Magiciens de la terre exhibit. He then ended up immigrating to France and living there ever since. Many of his pieces today are on a large scale, making them not auction-compatible.

Xiamen Dada is a group formed by Huang Yong Ping with Zha Lixiong, Liu Yiling, Lin Chun and Jiao Yaoming in 1986, a postmodernist, radical avant-garde group. However, they were looked at as a modern style of art. To protest, the group publicly burned their works, Haung Yong Ping stated that “ Art works are for the artist what opium is for men. Until art is destroyed, life is never peaceful” later the group was withheld from any other public showings.

Huang Yongping is one of today’s most important international artists. He started his international career in 1989 when he, as one of three artists from China, was chosen to participate in a landmark exhibition called ‘Magiciens de la Terre’, held at the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

However, before Huang Yongping became internationally well-known, he was already a seminal figure in China.